Welcome

I'm Amy Watts, a west Georgia-based craftsman, designer, and artist. My goal is to create something beautiful and/or useful everyday. I can typically be found designing websites for the IT company I co-own with my husband or working on remodeling projects around my home. I've worked professionally in drawing, stained glass, and teaching, and I enjoy videography, film editing, photography, weaving, crochet, sewing, and cooking. Many of the projects you'll see here were commissioned, but others are the result of creative impulse. Whatever I'm working on, I try to do it well.

Amy Watts

Thankfully my wonderful parents were nuts enough to let their young, teen-aged daughter take a 3-hour daily commute to downtown Miami's Design & Architecture Senior High for three years. It was a rigorous program of drafting, design, collaborative projects, and peer critique. I then attended University of Georgia for a Fine Art degree in Textile Design. Yes, I actually took a course called "Basket Weaving." I embroidered, crocheted, sewed, spun and dyed fibers, wove on looms and screen printed.

During my senior year of college, I was lured away from textile design by an apprenticeship at a stained-glass shop. After graduation I continued full-time for eight years at glass studios in Atlanta and Los Angeles. Each studio targeted a different clientele, so I was able to work on varied projects from residential windows to large-scale church and commercial jobs using hand-blown, imported glass. I gathered valuable experience crafting hundreds of windows, including fabricating many stained-glass windows for Disney's Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim, CA.

For years most of my drawings were floor plans and stained-glass patterns, however I had always been able to draw in a realistic style as well. On a whim in 2012 I drew a charcoal portrait of my daughter, which led to dozens of portrait commissions, Atlanta art festivals (see silly pic here), awards and teaching. From 2018-2022 I taught a weekly drawing class at the Carrollton Center for the Arts. In 2020 I expanded my media with color soft pastel painting.

While I still enjoy drawing and stained glass, I now fulfill my desire to design through technology. My husband and I own an IT management company, and many of our clients were requesting websites. I'd already been using AutoCAD for stained glass-pattern drafting and graphics software to produce prints of my drawings, so in 2016 I jumped into web design. I found it a creatively engrossing and useful skill that can help people grow their businesses.

When I'm not working on a creative project, I enjoy home remodeling projects, cooking, and helping my mom with licensed wildlife rehabilitation of Eastern cottontail rabbits. I also enjoy time with my family, Husky, Blue Heeler, two Labs, and a very tolerant orange tabby cat.